Sexual response and consent

Before I get into any serious topics, I just want to say that the discussion this past Thursday exceeded all my expectations. Thanks to everyone in the class for participating as we dealt with such a difficult issue. You folks are awesome.

That said, towards the end of class it seemed there was a bit of confusion on the difference between physiological sexual response and consent. It was put forward that you could medically "tell" if penetrative intercourse was consensual or not do to the conditions of the victim's body, and this simply isn't the case. 

There are certain physiological responses that are typically associated with arousal in females--and before I delve into those, I think it's important to point out that physical arousal in no way indicates consent. Moving along. Sexual arousal in females is often accompanied by erection of the nipples, clitoris, and labia, expansion of the vagina, and the production of vaginal lubrication. While it was never stated outright, it seemed to me that the train of thought present in class on Thursday was "if a woman is wet, she wasn't raped", which, for many reasons, is totally bogus.

First of all, the physiological response described above does not occur only in response to consensual sexual arousal. Studies have shown that the physiological responses above are present in many female-bodied people in response to a variety of sexual stimuli (even intercourse by non-human primates). Does this mean that females are consenting to sex at the slightest hint of sexual stimuli? Hell no! It's just the way many bodies work. These physiological changes are often seen in cases of rape--sometimes victims even acheive orgasm--and it's thought this might be because our bodies evolved this response so that our genitals wouldn't be damaged in case of unwanted sexual contact. The more you know!

It's also important to point out that the vagina isn't exactly the Gobe dessert when the person running the show isn't sexually aroused. The vagina is a moist environment: it needs to be to maintain the microbes that live inside of it. The vagina is also self cleaning, which means it produces fluids to clean itself other than those that serve the purpose of easing the way for penetrative sex. There's also a huge amount of variation in vaginal lubrication produced during arousal--they sell lube for a reason, right?

So basically: the vagina of someone who has been raped may respond in a very similar way to those of someone having consensual sex. Just looking at someone's genitals is no strong indicator of whether or not they just had consensual sex or were raped.